Tracen's Christmas presents--early

Tracen was lucky enough to get a few early Christmas presents. They were all shirts. His Grandma Neilson bought him this for Christmas but then decided he should probably have time to wear it before Christmas. It says "I ate Santa's cookies" He looks cute in it.
This is the other shirt. I had it made for him. He was supposed to open it Christmas morning but things got a little chubby and we had to break it out early....

Here's a close up so you can read it better....
Now if you don't get it don't worry, you're not alone. Neither Grandma got it at first. They both made some comment like "oh what does your shirt say....Oh big brother" and then went on their merry way like nothing. It wasn't until Jesse or Ty pointed it out that they got it. Then my parents told Larry to go read Tracen's shirt and he said "does it say anything other than big brother" then he said something like "who's he going to be a big brother too? Jesse?" Yes someday he may be bigger than Jesse because big and Jesse is a skinny dude. If you still don't know what's going on just keep reading....

When the boys first saw the shirt Ty said "Tracen's not a big brother" I said "are you sure?" he said "yes." Jesse thought he was going to be a big brother to Kaylynns baby, we informed him he was going to be a big cousin, not brother, to Kaylynn's baby. Then he said "he's going to be a big brother tooooooo......(thinking)......ME!" (see above comment by Larry)

So if you're still in the dark :) Tracen's having a little brother, due June 5th. And don't worry it's a boy (a perk of working at the hospital led us to that knowledge) there are no girls to be had in this family! That's ok, I'm good with it! We ended up telling Josh's family before Crystal's wedding due to the fact that only a hoodie covers my belly these days and the wedding required a little nicer attire than a hoodie! My mom and dad found out yesterday when we came to Logandale for Christmas.

We hope you all have a great rest of a Christmas Eve and a Merry Christmas. I'm sure I'll have pictures to post later!

Christmas Card

I have lots of stuff to post but not any time at the moment. So here's our Christmas Card. If I hadn't put "Merry Christmas" on them, I'd probably make them our "winter" card instead since they are still in the mail on the way to my house. But as soon as I get them I'll get them out hopefully. Until then you get to enjoy this one...which is the same one, but you can't hang it on your fridge or wherever you put it (ie the garbage ha ha) Don't worry if you do, they only cost me 6 cents, I won't be offended :)

I hope everyone is enjoying their holiday so far! We have a busy 2 weeks ahead of us and I hope I'm ready. Josh, Tracen and I are going to Orem tomorrow for a night. Then we have Crystals wedding to get ready on Friday. Then I work for three nights and then it's off to Grandmas. I hope I get everything finished up in time!

Tracen's 18 month's old!

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Tracen is getting so big! I can't believe he's 18 months old already. That means next Sunday I don't have a good excuse to stay with him in nursery anymore! We've been going for months because it's pointless to try to take him anywhere else! We love him so much he is seriously such a fun and happy boy! He's mischevious too. He smiles and laughs and plays with us and when the boys walk in from school he runs up and jabbers at them. And at this very exact moment he's insisting on sitting right in the middle of my lap which makes it hard to type! So here are some highlights on Tracen:


Tracen LOVES the tub. If I say "Tracen let's go get in the tubby" he runs for the bathroom. He loves the jets on the tub too and gets mad if I turn them off. He splashes and plays and makes a huge mess. Last night all three boys got in together and there was water everywhere and two stuffed animals in the tub.


Tracen says lots of words. One of my favorites is kee-kle keekle (tickle tickle) it's so cute! He also loves "cars" and says Kaw all the time. Anything with wheels counts as a car, trucks, cars, motorcycles even airplanes with wheels are cars. He drives them all over and makes car sounds which range from sweet to funny to loud and crazy. He also says things like cow, moo, dog, kitty, meow, ssssss (snake) no, up, down, peeees (please) teetoo (thank you) Ty, Jesse, Mom, Dad, Addi, milk, more and lots more.


He loves balls and throwing things. In fact, Josh insisted on sitting on the front row of the balcony at church last week and I was thouroughly irritated because I know if we sit there long enough something is going over the edge to the people below. That and he tried looking over the edge and yelled "Addi!" I told Josh he was responsible for anything that flew out of Tracen's hand.

Tracen folds his arms for the prayer and it's so stinking cute. He'll even say the prayer. He fold his arms and mumbles something like hummmna unnn umma unna hummuna. We try really hard not to giggle.

Tracen loves music and will dance and sing. It's so funny! He especially likes the opening song to Veggietales where Larry is playing the tuba. He doesn't watch tv very well, but he'll stop and sing along to the songs and/or dance. I'll have to get a video and post it.

Tracen loves blankets and stuffed animals he will gather them all up in his arms and is really mad if he can't carry them all. He picks up blankets and tries to wrap them around himself. It's so stinking cute. If we wrap him up in the blanket he'll grab onto to it, stick his face in it and go "ahhhhh" He's very snuggly too.

And just for kicks and giggles I'll tell you this little story. Tuesday morning Tracen and I got to hang out together while Josh went to SWAT. The only problem was I'd worked all night long and had to go back to work. So I laid down on the couch and put on a cartoon. By the way, Tracen doesn't watch too much t.v. so it was a lost hope. So first he grabbed his blanket and snuggled up for a few minutes and watched the movie next to me. Then he got down and played. Then he climbed up and gave me probably 10 juicy kisses, then he got down and played, the next thing I know he's got the baby wipes out and he's washing my face with them. I guess I should try a little harder to stay awake.


Tracen jumping:Mmmmm ice cream:
Hiking....or riding.

Farewell to the photo

So I'm being forced to take down this photo off the top of our blog. I love it. I never like myself in pictures and I just think Tracen and I are cute! However, Josh says he doesn't look so great and says it looks like he's looking down my shirt. What do you think? Is Josh being a perv?

He's going to be so made at me :)

Conversation

This is the conversation my boys were just having at each other (I said at on purpose, not with)

Tyler-I got the bed bugs
Jesse-I'm a Jedi Master
Tyler-I got the bed bugs
Jesse-I'm invisible
Tyler-I got the bed bugs
Jesse-This is my Jedi Master light saber
Tyler-I got the bed bugs...

You can see where this is going. Usually if one's not listening to the other, the other one gets mad, but I guess if neither one is listening it doesn't qualify? I don't pretend to understand.

I'm still a rockstar

This is what I'm dealing with as I type! My boys are going crazy! The boys decided they are rockstars and are dancing around listening to crazy music with bandanas on their heads. They even put one on Tracen. Jesse has been practicing his dance moves since our night with the evolution of dance video I posted a week or so ago.


The poor kid doesn't stand a chance!

Earlier, before the rockstar movement, the boys had a harmonica band. They paraded around and played what they would like to call "duets" Tracen even occasionally marched around with them.
I have crazy kids! But they are fun.

Sidewalks and other adventures

Tracen had a run in with the sidewalk the other day. Unfortunately the sidewalk won. He has a good battlewound to show for it. As you can see from the pictures he also love his PB&J and chocolate cookies. Now when I take pictures of him he smiles real big and says "Cheeeee"


We carved pumpkins tonight as part of FHE. I'm attempting to do better at FHE and blogging about it here, to keep myself motivated. The boys had lots of fun carving and Tracen oversaw the whole production.

Tyler is 9!

I can't believe Tyler is actually 9 years old! It seems so crazy! He turned 9 on the 21st. He went to his last day in Wolf's and then Grandpa and Grandma Whitney came up and took him out to buy a birthday present. He got back just in time for his football game. We all went to the football game together and Grandma Neilson, Crystal and Kurt all joined us too. Then Grandpa and Grandma Whitney took us out to Hamburger Patty's for dinner where we embarrassed Ty and sang him happy birthday. He was embarrassed even though we were the only ones there :)

Saturday was party day. I didn't think ahead really well. I knew I didn't work Saturday night but kind of left out the part where I worked Friday night. But it all worked out. I took Tyler, Jesse and Ty's two friends Ethan and James to the movie. Thanks a ton to Megan (and Addi) for tending Tracen, he's not fun to take to movies yet. Josh got to go to all the SUU homecoming activities so he missed out. We went to Astro boy which I thought was pretty cute. We bought lots of popcorn and treats and I think they had a good time. Then at 6 we had a family party, which Josh did get to come to thankfully. Ty wanted cheesecake, so we had that and vanilla and mint chip ice cream. I know they don't really go together well, but that's what we did. Ty loved all the gifts he got, so thank you everyone! He's been reading his books, downloading music and movies from itunes and shooting everything in sight with his nerf machine gun.

Ty is a great kid! He drives me crazy sometimes, but I've really come to realize what a great kid he really is. His teachers and other adults around him always tell me what a wonderful person he is and he really is. He's so smart it's scary sometimes. He loves to read. He is currently reading several things all at once and I'm not sure how he keeps it all straight but he does. He's reading Harry Potter again and is in book 4, he's read three of the Fablehaven books and says he's going to read four when he's done with Harry Potter and he's also reading Spiderwick, which he got for his birthday. He throws in other random things like Diary of a wimpy kid and others to mix it up I guess. He's a great brother and plays well MOST of the time with Jesse and takes great care of Tracen. I can sleep for a while after working and know that Ty will take care of Tracen and come get me if he needs something. He loves legos and builds all sorts of stuff. He loves all sorts of artsy type stuff and has recently taken up writing comics. They're pretty funny actually. He has loved playing football and I think this is the first sport he hasn't been totally sick of by the end of the season. In fact, he was really upset he had to miss a game a few weeks ago.

Ty also likes going to church and helps keep us all in line. Josh was going to go buy Ty some batteries for his machine gun today while he was working but then Ty realized it was sunday and was all torn between wanting his batterries and having Josh break the Sabbath to get them. He told me "mom I really want them, but it's not really an emergency huh?" So we came up with a plan and called Josh, he's going to go buy them after midnight, then it's Monday LOL!. He also loves scouts and constantly brings me his book to either help him pass something off or to ask me to help him pass something off. In wolfs he ended up with his badge and 5 arrow points. He's a crazy kid.

One of the things I love about Ty most is that he's super compassionate and empathetic. He totally feels for other people. He cares about his friends and would rather be upset himself than make them upset. He cares a lot about other people and will really feel happy or sad for them. He's cried for people before and he'll see something on the news or tv and comment about how sad that is and that he's sorry for them.

Anyway, it's a long post but I haven't written anything about Ty for a long time so it's more for me, sorry if you're still reading all this! I love you bud and I'm so proud of you! I'm so glad that I get to be your mom. I hope you had a Happy Birthday!

Ty's birthday cheesecake
Tyler and I trying to light the candles on his cheesecake...interesting. Cheesecake en flambe anyone?
Ty hiking the other day

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TYLER!

Quote of the Day

Josh was trying to get Jesse to clean up the family room (and hall) because Grandma and Grandpa were coming over. The family room was clean but the hall was still a mess. When Jesse cleans up he dumps everything that belongs in his room in the hall. His excuse is that Tracen was sleeping, even if he wasn't.

Josh-Clean up your stuff in the hall, Grandma will be able to see the hall when she comes.
Jesse-I'll just shove it all in my room and shut the door, k?

Interestingly enough, Josh didn't argue. But since I wasn't in charge I didn't intervene.

Cookies are gooooood

So it was in the original plan for Josh to go home teaching today and I was assigned cookies. That didn't quite happen due to several reasons, ie Tracen was having some breathing issues and our friends (and Josh's home teaching partner) basement filled up with mud last night, but Josh still wanted cookies. I made some white chocolate cherry cheesecake cookies over conference that were yummy and I was going to make them again, but I didn't have everything I needed. So I made snickerdoodles instead. But I wanted to post the cookie recipe for the cheesecake ones because they were so dang good. I didn't get any pictures before they were all gone, but I got the recipe from good things utah and then changed it to make it better (We think anyway!) but I'll post both because really I'm not that great of a cook and I only changed one minor detail anyway :)

White Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake

1 cup brown sugar
¼ cup white granulated sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
½ cup shortening
¼ cup butter or margarine softened
¼ cup white chocolate chips melted
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 ½ cups white chocolate chips

8 oz package cream cheese softened
¾ cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1-2 Tbsp milk

1 can cherry pie filling or in our case your favorite jam--ours was raspberry peach.

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

In large mixing bowl cream together sugars, shortening, margarine, vanilla and eggs. Add in slightly cooled melted white chocolate. Beat at medium speed of electric mixer until well blended. Add flour, baking soda and salt. Beat at low speed until soft dough forms. Stir in white chocolate chips.

Cream together softened cream cheese , powdered sugar and vanilla. Stir in milk until blended.
Drop dough by heaping teaspoons about 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet. Make an indention with your finger or spoon in top of dough. Drop a teaspoon of cream cheese mixture into each indention. Bake for 10 -12 minutes or until light golden brown. Let cool for 1-2 minutes before removing from cookie sheet. Let cool. Spoon on cherry pie filling or jam. Store in refrigerator.

Makes about 3 dozen

Side notes :) I put the extra cookies in the fridge without the sauce on top and add it when we eat them, they store easier that way. And we liked the jam WAY better than the pie filling. We also tried a few flavors of pie filling and maybe cherry just isn't my favorite flavor.

I had Josh beat the cream cheese mixture for me. If your husband is like mine, make extra, he served himself a bowl of cream cheese/sugar and ate it.

I made my first batch too big, small ones are better. And unless you are really feeding the masses don't double the recipe, it makes a ton. Josh was sure I needed to double it and we ate cookies for days and shared them with everyone.

And if you need more inspiration for lots of yummy cookies, my friend Alisha is doing a weekly cookie project. They all look so dang good. Josh has also put me in charge of making the creamy jalapeno dip on her family blog. I guess that's what I'll do next.

Do you remember all of these?

Ok this is funny. It took us about a half an hour just to watch this the first time because Josh kept rewinding it and making the boys try different dance moves, which was entertaining all on it's own. There is also a number 2 but it's not quite as funny as the original

Quote of the Day

Jesse said to me today..."mom I wish I'd never started cracking my fingers because now they are lazy" LOL, after talking to him I think lazy is the opposite of strong because he can no longer hang on to the monkey bars. I told him I thought if he stopped then it would probably get better.

Then later...
Jesse "They shouldn't make games like shopping cart hero"
Me: " I thought you liked that game"
Jesse:"I do but it teaches kids to do bad things"
I think this must be his reaction to his brothers idea of riding the wagon down into the wash. He didn't think that would be a very good idea.

This boy loves his food...and other random facts

Tracen loves to eat! He's trying to figure out how to feed himself with a spoon now. He's been working on forks for a while now. This morning I'm not sure if he got more oatmeal on himself or in himself. It worked a little better after I put it in the microwave and thickened it back up. He definitely needed a tubby afterward.
The other day Josh took Jesse to St. George to buy him some shoes appropriate for PE. Unfortunately his boots don't qualify and there are no decent running type shoes to be had in Cedar. While there they went to Panda, so Tyler Tracen and I went to the Dairy Freeze and got ice cream. Tracen screamed the whole way home because I wouldn't let him eat his in the car. He sure enjoyed that ice cream as you can tell. I needed something a little bigger than his little bibs to contain the mess to I just tied a huge dish towel to him


Tracen is getting so big way too fast! He says lots of stuff now...about 90% of it no one understands but he talks all the time. His favorite word is Whoa, whoa, whoa! He LOVES balls. He was so mad yesterday at Ty's game because I wouldn't let him go get the football. He runs and laughs and gives out kisses sparingly, so if you get one count your lucky stars. He sings all the time it's so cute! Last night was singing some songs to him before bed and he just sang right along. When he's done eating his spits out the last bite of food and if there are any plates, forks, spoons or left over food on his tray it all ends up on the floor. That's frustrating! I need a big mat to put under him while he eats. My floor would stay lots cleaner. He loves to read books and make lots of noise in church which is not limited to squealing, screaming and burping. He also has a fake cry now and also gets his feelers hurt when you tell him not to do things....like bite.

The boys love to torment him. Sunday we were at Grandma Bev's and the boys were sitting at the table eating a cookie. Jesse kept scooting over closer to him and putting his arm around him. Tracen kept pushing him away and yelling at him like he was saying "get out of my space!" They drive him nuts sometimes. He's mischevious too though and does plenty of his own tormenting!

I love this little boy he's so cute and fun! In fact I had to tak a break from this post to play. He kept climbing up on my lap laying down with his head hanging off my knees, then hed do a little back flip and start all over. Now he's on my lap cuddling while he watches dinosaur train. He's so fun!

Fall is definitely here

Fall is definitely here. I'm not so super excited about the cold weather as everyone else seems to be. I'm not ready for that yet. But with fall comes lots of good things too. Tyler is playing football this year. He's now decided he's going to be a professional football player "because they make like 3 million dollars a year, and I really enjoy it" That's a typical Ty answer! He's so funny. I'm glad to see him out playing sports though and having a good time. He had his first game Monday. They lost by one touchdown, however, depending on who you talk to determines what that actually means when it translates into a score. Maybe they don't teach math here? just kidding. Jesse was excited to find all his friends at the game and ran off with them. I only spotted him two more times during the game. However Ty did have his very own cheerleader. Tracen clapped for him :)
Tyler is in the blue jersey with a 9 and silver shorts. Flag football in Parowan includes everyone from age 8- 12 so there's a huge size and experience difference. Ty is a pretty big kid for his age and you can see that there are quite a few kids bigger than him. It's goood for him though and he's having fun. He even got to run the ball once during this game. but someone got his flag.




Tracen played with Addi when he wasn't cheering for Ty. He kept walking up to her with his arms wide open like he was going to hug her but then wouldn't. I don't know if he was waiting for her to come the other 10% or what but it was funny. All the pics of Tracen are close up because I had my big lens on, thats as far out as I could get.
The other day Josh put goldfish in Tracen's pocket and he loved that. These overalls dont' have a front pocket though so he just hid the fries inbetween the shirt and overalls.


And our garden has gone nuts. It's going to freeze tonight so I spent most of the day yesterday picking everything in the garden. Thanks Josh, Megan and Addi for helping! They're awesome. We picked the entire tomato plants hoping that would help them ripen better because I literally still have 100's of green tomatoes. It's sad. We got quite a few pumpkins for only having 6 feet of garden for them to grow in!
Megan picked the rest of the corn for me. We had a wheelbarrow full left.
These were the closest to being ready so we just picked them.
Mom and I did the carrots last week. This year we were smart enough to thin them, unlike last year. They got huge! And they were tons easier to peel since they weren't wrapped around eachother. We kept a bunch for eating and froze the rest.
And I finally got some winter squash to grow. My family loves this stuff so I'm so excited. And there's all my bunching onions. Don't know what to do with those exactly!
I'm sad that after tonight the garden is pretty much over! It's been lots of fun. Next year I'm going to do things a little different in some spots but I think we had a pretty good garden!

Paragonah Park

We went out for a little outing this afternoon after I woke up. The boys love Paragonah park, it has all those toys that are gone from all the other parks because people get hurt and need someone else to blame. This nasty little contraption happens to be one of them:
I think I used to like these merry go rounds but I sure don't anymore! Josh made me get on it with Tracen and the boys while he spun us. In about 2.5 seconds I was so nauseated and within 5 Tracen was shaking. I made him stop us and take Tracen while I tried to keep my food in my stomach. Ugh, no thanks.


Tracen went down the slide a time or two. He is so cute.
We took us some PB&J, Dorrito's left over from Powell, water and apples and had us a little picnic.
Mmmmm apples......
Jesse showed us how tough he was and did the monkey bars three times. He tries to do everything Josh tells him to so he attempted to climb up the pole too but I think he was too tired at that point.
The we tried out the teeter totters (another rare park find). It took us several tries to get the weight ratio right. We tried this:
This one worked pretty well, probably the best actually:
We also tried this one. Would have proably worked better if we'd added Tracen or put Ty on back. Yes I weigh more than them I guess.
We had a few injuries while playing the below games...
The boys played keep away, which they informed me is now called monkey in the middle. I had no idea.
Then we (when I say we I mean mostly the boys) played football. They prefer tackle to two hand touch. I occasionally held the ball for kicking.
We played a little kick ball.
Sadie thoroughly enjoyed our outing. She loves grass and there is none to be had at our house. She's so funny this is how she lays down most of the time:
Enjoying a little grass. Silly dog!
We were going to go rappelling too, but it all ended when Jesse got bit by a wasp. That was pretty sad, so we came home instead. It's ok, I'm a little tired now, I only slept for 4 hours.